• There were many reasons for the change of the site software, the biggest was security. The age of the old software also meant no server updates for certain programs. There are many benefits to the new software, one of the biggest is the mobile functionality. Ill fix up some stuff in the coming days, we'll also try to get some of the old addons back or the data imported back into the site like the garage. To create a thread or to reply with a post is basically the same as it was in the prior software. The default style of the site is light colored, but i temporarily added a darker colored style, to change you can find a link at the bottom of the site.

2008 se5 RS/Frustrated & Broken Hearted

:agree: But we unfortunately have to remember that those brands have had decades to develop their touring rigs... nojoke
True, and they have had problems along the way, but I think it is a worthy goal and it doesn't hurt to set our sights on it for the near future. I believe it is achievable!
 
Many of us have come from Goldwing and Beemer backgrounds where unfailing quality is a given. We should expect no less from BRP. I look forward to hearing more stories of NO downtime especially on the RT series. Let 2011 be the start of that trend.

Itchy trigger finger, :popcorn:

Old Dog :chat:
I don't know about BMW but I do know about Goldwings and they have had their fair share of major problems. This is just one of them.
You can do a search on "frame crack" on this board and it will bring up plenty of results. There were some very pissed off Honda owners and rightly so.
http://www.gl1800riders.com/forums/showthread.php?t=225461
Kissellcrack.jpg



[FONT=Arial,Bold][FONT=Arial,Bold]Here is a list from the recall bulletins for frame cracks. The vins go to early '04 models. This was not fixed until the government got involved. [/FONT][/FONT]​
[FONT=Arial,Bold][FONT=Arial,Bold]
All 2001 GL1800 (non-ABS)
1HFSC470*1A000010 thru 1HFSC470*1A006709
All 2001 GL1800A (ABS)
1HFSC474*1A000034 thru 1HFSC474*1A002553

2002 GL1800 (non-ABS)
1HFSC470*2A100001 thru 1HFSC470*2A111802
2002 GL1800A (ABS)
1HFSC474*2A100001 thru 1HFSC474*2A102393

2002
GL1800 (Non-ABS):
1HFSC470*2A111803 thru 1HFSC470*2A113582
GL1800A (ABS):
1HFSC474*2A102394 thru 1HFSC474*2A102823

[FONT=Arial,Bold][FONT=Arial,Bold]2003[/FONT]
[/FONT]GL1800 (Non-ABS):
1HFSC470*3A200001 thru 1HFSC470*3A204860
GL1800A (ABS):
1HFSC474*3A200001 thru 1HFSC474*3A201126

2003 GL1800 (non-ABS)
[/FONT]
[/FONT]
1HFSC470*3A204861 thru 1HFSC470*3A212217
2003 GL1800A (ABS)

1HFSC474*3A201127 thru 1HFSC474*3A203256
2004 GL1800 (non-ABS)
1HFSC470*4A300001 thru 1HFSC470*4A301683
2004 GL1800A (ABS)
1HFSC474*4A300001 thru 1HFSC474*4A300334

(*) Denotes check digit.

original12.jpg
 
Gold Wing Frame Crack

I'm familiar with that issue, though not personally. As a whole, though,
I think the Gold Wing sets the bar. I have to qualify my statement upfront in that I am only an observer and not an owner. I can not speak for those who have one.
 
I have a 2010 rt a&c sm5, the only problem I have had was the air bag when the bike was new and the dealer fixed it with no problem or wait for me. I love the spyder not for what it is but for what it allows me to do. At this point in life I would not be riding on two wheels. It seems to me as time goes by our experience with the Spyder will get better and better; the good dealers are learning more each day. When they see a problem the first time I think it may frustrate them and us but the next time it will be an easy fix. Or hope for the future may rest more with an ever improving dealer / owner network.
:2thumbs:
 
You said that they changed almost everything at least four times. Did anyone ever think to replace the battery? I had a Harley with one bad cell in the battery . One cell would occasionaly reverse polarity and would screw up everything. Almost impossible to find. And it is the heart of the electrical system. Machinegunner
Could be something this simple:popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:
 
Could be something this simple:popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:

It would be ironic and sad if it was. BRP needs to step up here and help this poor guy. This is a unique situation, so make it right. This would be no sweat for them, is customer service 101 and would actually be GOOD PR! I mean C'mon, this poor guy is getting royally screwed. All he wants is a machine he can enjoy for more than a day without it breaking. I feel that is a reasonable expectation. How can BRP be OK with this? He is making his payments faithfully, holding up his end, and they are just stealing his money. I just read again and saw there is no lemon law to resort to. There HAS to be something that can be done for this man. I wish the gentleman luck.
 
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bob and his wife joanne are outstanding people, especially in the riding groups in the twin cities. They have helped me out a ton.

If his bike is not working at this point it needs to be swapped out.

For somone who is in his 70's he is riding way more that I thought possible, it would be a great addition to all the spyder meets but I know the issues with his bike have screwed him out of going.

As in all mass produced things there are ones that have aids and that spyder that bob has does have aids. BRP should be chopping at the bit to get it back and give it to people in R&D to see what made it really crap out so it NEVER happens to another owner.

Come on BRP, its Christmas, what would Jesus do?
 
SpiderLovers and Lamont to the rescue perhaps?

I realize I don't have a leg to stand on in this discussion in that I don't own a Spyder... yet.
However, I am a potential buyer of an RTS. My decision will be highly influenced by BRP's response to legitimate customer issues. I have contemplated both a Wing and a Beemer, but would prefer the Y factor and "cool" factor of the RTS.
I realize that Lamont has had some communication with BRP on Studybaker Bob's behalf based on his posting. Again I realize we don't know all the details of what transpired.
Cannot SpyderLovers.Com and Lamont wield some weight collectively to BRP to implement better Customer Service Procedures. Doesn't BRP realize this affects their PR and their bottom line? :gaah::gaah:
Please accept my ranting with all objectivity. I have no personal issues here.
I love this forum.

I'll get off my soapbox,

Old Dog :chat:
 
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I realize I don't have a leg to stand on in this discussion in that I don't own a Spyder... yet.
However, I am a potential buyer of an RTS. My decision will be highly influenced by BRP's response to legitimate customer issues. I have contemplated both a Wing and a Beemer, but would prefer the Y factor and "cool" factor of the RTS.
I realize that Lamont has had some communication with BRP on Studybaker Bob's behalf based on his posting. Again I realize we don't know all the details of what transpired.
Cannot SpyderLovers.Com and Lamont wield some weight collectively to BRP to implement better Customer Service Procedures. Doesn't BRP realize this affects their PR and their bottom line? :gaah::gaah:
Please accept my ranting with all objectivity. No personal issues here.
I love this forum.

I'll get off my soapbox,

Old Dog :chat:

good idea, all it takes is willingness and use of common sense on both sides, no politics, no law needed.

I am in, it is also in my own interest to make things work. As i said before i LOVE my Spyder ( i should have it back by tommorow after more than two months in service again :gaah: ) and hate BRP's attitude. Well it takes 2 parties to get things moving right direction.
 
Frustrated and Broken Hearted/2008 se5

A big thanks again to all my brothers & sisters that have responded & feel our pain! And to spyderlovers.com for giving us a chance to vent our frustration with CAN AM BRP & for good times!We picked up our brand new 2008 se5 RS spyder the end of May,2009 from St. Boni motorsport in St. Bonifacius, MN.In our opinion, St. Boni is not a reputable or ethical dealer! It sadens us to know that some of you are having some of the probems we are experiencing & very happy to hear most of you are quite satisfied with your beloved spyders. We are very interested in your experiences, good & not so good. We are also interested in your experiences with your dealerships, good & not so good, that way we'all can take the business to the good guys. Thanks to LaMonster, too, for giving us a space to state our frustrations as well as good experiences. We get good ideas & hear about good & not so good experiences. Tousley motorsport in White Bear Lake, MN is a good dealership & their service dept"feels our pain" & has worked hard with BRP to fix our spyder from hell. They have spent many frustrating hours trying to duplicate the intermittent electrical problems, the worst kind of problem you can have are intermittent electrical. Another good BRP dealer is the one in Prescott Valley, AZ After a miserable & painful ride from St. Paul MN to Sedona, AZ, about 1800 miles & 5 day trip, a very painful & heartbraking trip on the spyder from hell. My oldest buddy, big Richard, from LA, CA, met us at my sister, Jean's, condo in Sedona, AZ. Big Richard & I were going out on a scenic putt, him on his 1995 Harley bagger. We gased up& 20 miles out, the spyder from hell went into limp mode, 45 mph, "DPS" mode! The next day, it would not start & we were convinced we could not trust the spyder to get us home safely.My wife, Joan, started checking on pickup trucks, car & trailer, train, trucking to get the spyder home & back up to Tousley & everything was going to cost over $2000 if they could even do it. We could not afford it on our fixrd incomes & social security. Joan called the owner of the Prescott Valley authorized dealership, Scott Walz, & he said he was sorry we were having so much trouble & we could leave our spyder at his dealership, free of charge, for as long as we needed to arrange transportation back to Towsley in White Bear Lake, MN. He sent his guy to pick up our spyder and hauled it off. That's the man we will do business with when we move to AZ next year. We ended up renting a little VW from Hertz & $300 & 2 days later we were home safe. The VW was a great little car & we loved it. The spyder ruined our dream week vacation. Joan called Pete Hoff, service mgr at Tousley and Carlo at BRP to bring them up to date. Carlo was very concerned about the bloody blisters on the tops of my feet because of the heat from the engine compartment.
Carlo assured us he would handle transportation for the spyder back to Tousley at no charge to us & get the spyder fixed. Our beloved spyder spent 4 weeks in Prescott Valley before it was trucked to Tousley in MN, that was all of July.Upon arrival, we drove to Tousley to get personal items out of the trunk & buddy pack on the back. When we opened the trunk we discovered the trunk had about 1/2" of water in the bottom. The trunk has been worked on 4-5times to stop it from leaking. Some of our items were soaked & moldy & had to be thrown away.(the service mgr at St Boni told me that the trunk was not designed not to leak!?). Our spyder was at Tousley for another 4 weeks (August), that's 2 months of our short riding season here in bad weather, MN & two $275 payments! It was outside in the weather, storms & heat up to 90.The work order for that month of August only says "can not duplicate" problems. The service mgr, Art, & the mechanic basically refuse to work on our spyder unless BRP has a high teck technicans help because they were/are tired of working on the darn thing. Who can blame them. We brought it home all the same problems still existed. We rode short rides, documented same problems, wrote more letters to BRP Pres & VP's & Carlo, checked out lemon laws, checked Atty generals office again & took back to Tousley. Spoke with Crystal at BRP this time.BRP gave Art at Tousley the ok to do everything to correct all problems. We were so optomistic. I asked art as long as he was going to have the spyder stripped down to bare frame, would they please install rubber stripping & groments kit that my friend, Seth O bought & paid for & gave to me. It's a very high quality kit. Seth's friends designed this very well thought out air management system, high quality materials. BRP would be wise to look into this product & contract them to supply for all their new machines. BRP would not authorize Art to install on my spyder. Per BRP, not necessary & would void my warranty. I am ready to try anything to keep the painful bloody blisters off of my feet. Only 500+ miles into our trip to AZ, the engine heat burned blisters on my feet even when my boots were wrapped with 3 layers of insolated tin foil, which helped only some & my cowboy riding boots are ruined-all heat cracked. This time in Tousley service was another several weeks, we picked up the spyder on 11-17-10. Before our trip to AZ, we had the spyder in Tousley service to check it out, & it was there for 3 weeks, They replaced & put in the 3rd new DPS(the one that crapped out in AZ)because the first two were defective, this time.Before they had already put in a couple of new ones, making the total of 5 or 6. They also put in the 3rd or 4th new park brake and we bought the new rear tire & they installed.We want to move to sunny AZ because we can get about 350 days of good riding weather, MN may get the other 15 days. I have been a car, pickup, hot rod & motorcycle mechanic all of my life. I bought the new 578 page shop manual for $130 for the spyder & have spent many, many hours reading & studying so I would have a clue as to how the spyder works. I will admit, it's too high teck for me, but I'm not a dumb, dumb either! My wife is a real stickler when it comes to keeping very good records, she has all documents, corespondence, work orders, phone calls, in order. I can't understand, how can BRP get away with selling a machine without a hand brake on the right handlebar & such a crappy uncomfortable seat. After we picked up the spyder on 11-17-10, i drove it home about 15 miles at about 4:00 pm. After all that was done & all the work, in heavy traffic, I shifted the se5 auto trans from 1st gear into 2nd, & instead of a smooth shift that would go room, room into 2nd, it stumbled & went rump, rump like the computer is trying to figure what to do next. This throws you back & forth hard. This is just one thing we have been complaining about from day 1, among the other many intermittent electrical problems we've had. It's obvious to me that they have not fixed the spyder because they can't, because it's a lemon, it's jinxed! We are not going through anymore heartache, frustration, fear, arguing & madness. We have contacted a federal lemon law attorney in Chicago. He claims he has successfully settled over 35,000 suits with 95 to 98% out of court, and can get us 20% of our original price back + attorney fees, which still leaves us short & we can not do. He claims he has dealt with BRP. Crystal with BRP offered us $1000 rebate towards the purchase of another machine of our choice, but we will not go further into debt on our fixed ss income. We don't want to eat dog food to own a new spyder & we don't want to be fighting with BRP til the day we die. In our "golden days" we'd like to have fun & take it easy. We made some big sacricices just to get into this nightmare. It's a good thing we are both retired & can make the time to spend 10-15 hours just working on this the last couple of days. We feel we have been more than cooperative, patient & understanding. We feel its time that BRP takes the responsibility for their high teck, computerized electrical nightmare back to Canada & give us, straight across with no additional money out of our pocket, the 2009 red & black, se5 RS at Tousley & show that they are a company that stands behind their product & give it's loyal & loving customers faith in them again. We want to love a spyder again. We have told BRP, the Pres & Vp's that the best advertising is free from a satisfied customer. The worst advertising is also free, a dissatisfied customer. I've also heard it said that if you are satisfied with a product you tell some of your friends. If you are dissatisfied with a product, you are pissed and tell everyone! I have been riding motorcycles for more than 60 years, everything is not always perfect, but this whole thing is rediculous!
 
those are repops air damn setups that helped out with channelling the air away. Harvey did a bang up job on them.
 
BRP should step up everytime to assist owners however if there ever was a need for them to step up to the plate it's now!! I wish you the best of luck hopefully BRP does the right thing.
 
I love to ryde spyder but my experience with brp and dealers have been similar to yours.
I had my 09 se5 for 2 years and had 20 warranty repairs and has been at the dealer since oct. 23rd for it's 21st, 4 tows and 5 limp home modes.

1st year
95 days in shop with first problem on the 2nd day but I still managed to put 30000 miles on it as trips to nowhere were almost a weekly thing.

2nd year
90 days in shop and counting with just 8000 miles. Trips are not as fun when you get stranded couple of times, 240 and 190 miles from home and you are constantly worried about it.

It has costed me a lot of time and money to take/tow the spyder to the dealer and back and couple dealers gave up on my spyder saying they are loosing money on my spyder because brp does not pay them for diagnostic work.

Carlo at brp was at least nice and seems to be trying but Nancy sounded like sleazy lawyer.
 
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Electrical problems

I know it sounds silly, but from a mechanical stand point you could not have 5 or 6 dps units go bad by themselves. It has to be a very simple problem that no one is looking for because it is too simple. I know a friend who burned up three rear cyl. on his Harley in the course of one month. Finally, an older mechanic said the same thing and found pin hole in the vaccuum line to the rear cyl. The problem was solved. That is why I mentioned looking at battery. All the computers are fed by the battery. If there is an intermittent shot possible reversal of polarity you could just imagine what that could do to a sensitive computer. The problem could even be as simple as loose ground wire. You said it was intermittent. Tell your mechanic to check the simple things and maybe your bike will work, since BRP hasn't been able solve it. machinegunner
 
I seem to remember the early SE models needing an extra ground because of coil noise causing intermittent problems. If there is a loose ground or power wire even, it could cause problems.

One thing I would do if it was me, remove all ground connections and inspect them for dirt, corrosion or even paint being where it doesn't belong. A good cleaning too while you're there.

The fact they replaced everything on multiple occasions leads me to believe it is a simple, fundamental problem. Also shows a level of stupidity when you keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Unfortunately many techs nowadays fall into the replacement trap, even the good ones sometimes ignore the basics.

I had a half million dollar test system with weird failures no one could explain for over a year. Come to find out there was paint on a grounding point that was insulating a grounding lug. A hard lesson I will never forget.

I hope everything turns out OK for you.
 
Frustrated & Brokenhearted/2008 se5 RT

Thanks again for all of your input. As I explained, every electrical component has been changed including all new wiring. I will not touch any electrical comuonent or wires because if I did, they woiuld blame me for messing things up and void my warranty. We paid a lot of money for a machine that is supposed to work and be dependable, and due to the fact that BRP can not tell me whats wrong with it & what makes it do the bad things that it does that tells me that they do not know. Thats why they keep throwing new parts at it. If they knew what's wrong with it, they would fix it. I am sure they do not like all of the very bad pr they are getting from other dissappointed spyder lovers. We have itemized in detail of all the problems we are having & their attempt to fix it, which includes many weeks & months sitting in BRP service depts.. We really appreciate everyone's input. We are sick to death on this high tech computerized electrical nightmare. Its high time for BRP to step up up & restore our confidence in their products. Its time for them to give us straight accross the brand new 2009 red & blace machine sitting on Tousley's show room floor 2 years now. We are looking forward for a new spyder to ride next year forward and to have a good time. We still love the Y factor that we bargained & paid for which was for trouble free enjoyment.
 
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